VIDEO GAMES REVIEW / AARON CURTISS : Taking Off With a Blast : After Burner’s aerial combat is fast and furious in this adaptation of an arcade favorite.

SEGA 32X

After Burner

Time and again, I have griped about the quality of games for Sega 32X. If only they could all be as good as After Burner, a killer romp through the unfriendly skies, I would stop whining for good.

A faithful adaptation of the coin-op arcade game, After Burner for 32X is as fast and fun as it gets. The mission is straightforward: Wipe out two communication bases deep in enemy territory with your heavily armed fighter jet.

Flight controls are smooth and intuitive--a necessity considering it requires both sharp shooting and fancy flying to knock down enemy jets and dodge what seems like a never-ending hail of flak.

Ammunition is replenished at various points throughout the game, but its supply is limited, adding to the realism by requiring players to carefully choose targets, rather than just unleash missile after missile.

Anyone who has played a combat flight simulator knows how critical speed can be.

After Burner is plenty fast. Scenery races by below and enemy formations scream by as missile plumes obscure targets ahead.

With so much action going on at once, most games would slow down, but After Burner takes it in stride. In fact, it moves and looks better than some of the games for the $400 Sega Saturn, which brings up this question: Why can’t they all be this good?

PLATFORM: Sega 32X

RATING: Insane

GAME BOY

Donkey Kong Land

Sometimes even the best ideas can turn out bad. So it is with the Game Boy version of the groundbreaking Donkey Kong Country. Despite its potential, Donkey Kong Land ends up crumbling under its own weight.

Donkey Kong Country--for those who have been living in a cave--amazed Super Nintendo owners with incredible graphics that beat some of the 32-bit games just now hitting the shelves.

And it was a hoot to play.

The elements of its big brother remain intact in Donkey Kong Land and, to a certain degree, that is its downfall. Play remains enjoyable, but is actually hindered by the graphic detailing stuffed into the banana-yellow cartridge.

Game Boy is not Super Nintendo. Even under the best conditions, Game Boy’s tiny, black-and-white, liquid crystal display can be tough on the eyes. Yet the designers of Donkey Kong Land tried to recreate the richness of Donkey Kong Country’s scenes on a screen that frankly cannot cut it.

What results is a screen full of black and gray blobs that are nearly impossible to track. Even with the Super Game Boy adapter, it’s tough to figure out what’s going on.

I played for several days before giving up in frustration. Designers would have done better to simplify the graphics, making them more like plain old Donkey Kong, one of the all-time greatest Game Boy games.

Instead, Donkey Kong Land is too much of a good thing and ends up bad.

PLATFORM: Game Boy

RATING: Sucks

PC CD-ROM

Full Throttle

As a rule, adventure games bore the shorts off me. More often than not, players assume the role of some prince or fairy or gnome and wander through tired variations of the same old enchanted lands in search of some damsel in distress.

With the exception of the damsel, Full Throttle tosses out all that junk and sets players loose in a world that is eerily realistic. The hero, Ben, is more of an antihero, a scruffy biker with one bad set of wheels.

Of course, Ben subscribes to his own moral code. So when his gang is framed for the murder of a doddering motorcycle manufacturer, Ben hits the road as much to set things right as to save his own hide.

Along the way, he falls for a motorcycle mechanic with almost as much attitude as he has. A good part of the game is spent in search of Maureen, who turns out to have more of a connection to Ben’s predicament than she lets on.

With beautiful scenery, hilarious dialogue and a soundtrack peppered with real biker bands, Full Throttle is in its own class among adventure games.

Even the interface exudes aloof toughness, allowing players to kick or punch answers out of uncooperative bartenders or trailer-dwelling junkyard artists.

But fists and jackboots are never enough to navigate life’s unpredictable road. Players find themselves confronted with an array of puzzles and challenges--from swiping gas to talking a reluctant trucker into breaking a roadblock--that make the game constant fun.

Populated with a world of seedy losers, Full Throttle is a winner.

PLATFORM: PC CD-ROM

RATING: Cool

Ratings: Insane, the very best; cool, are, of course, cool; mediocre, games better borrowed than bought; suck, games at the bottom of the barrel.